Demand for local meat, especially grass-fed beef and pastured pork, is on the rise, consumers learn more about the inhumane treatment of animals, over-use of antibiotics, worker injustices and environmental destruction associated with factory farm meat production.

But finding, and affording, local meat isn’t always easy. That’s because current factory farm-friendly U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat processing regulations are geared toward large-scale factory farms, not local, small-scale farms.

Two members of Congress—Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)—want to help make it easier for consumers to buy local meat, and easier for small-scale farmers to thrive.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress: Please Support the PRIME Act (H.R. 3187) so You Can Support Local Farms, Not Factory Farms

Current regulations put local meat producers at a disadvantage

If consumers want to buy more local meat, and local farms are willing to produce it, what’s the hold-up? The USDA describes the problem this way:

Bringing local meat and poultry to market requires access to appropriately scaled processing facilities with the skills, inspection status, and reliability to prepare these products safely, legally, and to customer specifications. Farmers often suggest that limited local processing infrastructure restricts the supply of local meat and poultry. Many farmers drive multiple hours one way to their nearest inspected processing facility and bring only a few head at a time, resulting in high transportation and opportunity costs per pound of meat. Farmers may have difficulty getting slaughter dates during processors’ busy seasons or they must schedule far in advance. Some small processing facilities may not offer specific services that farmers and their customers’ desire.

But what the USDA doesn’t talk about in its 2013 “Economic Research Report,” is the fact that its own regulations are what hinder local producers.

As one rancher put it:

Overregulation of food processing has done more to hurt ranching families than they even know. The reason for this is that heavy regulation makes it extremely difficult to enter the slaughter and processing sector since the risks are high and the regulatory hurdles immense. It’s easier to build a centralized feedlot/packing house if you are a Cargill with huge capital reserves and an army of technicians than it is to build a USDA certified mom-and-pop packing facility. The reason is simple: reams of paperwork, tests, constantly updated procedures, and risk create an almost insurmountable barrier to entry.

The number of federally inspected slaughterhouses dropped from 1,627 in 1980 to 1,051 in 2010, according to an article in the Washington Post.  The diminishing number of processing facilities forces many small, local producers to ship their animals hundreds or even thousands of miles to be processed at a shrinking number of “USDA approved” facilities—the same facilities used by their large-scale, factory farm competitors. Local ranchers who commit to a higher standard of care for their animals are forced to either close up shop or expose their cattle to the same poor standards and facilities as factory-farmed cattle, while at the same time causing their locally raised meat to be co-mingled with factory farm meat.

PRIME Act would allow local meat producers to process locally, for in-state sales

Under current regulations (21 U.S.C. § 623(a)), local meat producers are exempt from the requirement that they use only USDA-approved processing facilities, but only if the meat they produce is used for personal, household, guest and employee use.

The PRIME (Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption) Act would expand this exemption, by allowing individual states to distribute custom-slaughtered meat such as beef, pork or lamb (poultry is already exempt), to consumers, restaurants, hotels, boarding houses, and grocery stores, within state lines.

In her article, “Breaking the USDA’s Slaughterhouse Stranglehold, Prof. Baylen J. Linnekin, executive director of Keep Food Legal Foundation, says:

The USDA should immediately halt any inspection requirements for meat that’s raised, slaughtered, and sold in any one state. Let states and municipalities and farmers and consumers decide what inspection system is right for them. Then—and only then—will the ‘local’ in local foods be more than an aspiration.

In a press release announcing the introduction of the PRIME Act, Rep. Massie said:

Despite consumers’ desire to know where their food comes from, federal inspection requirements make it difficult for them to purchase food from local farmers they know and trust. These onerous federal rules also make it more difficult for small farms and ranches to succeed financially. It is time to open our markets to small farms and producers and give consumers the freedom to choose.

More info:
“Factory Farm Nation,” Food & Water Watch 2015 report
“Breaking the USDA's Slaughterhouse Stranglehold,” Baylen J. Linnekin
“Slaughterhouse options shrink for small farmers,” Karen Miltner, USA Today
“Big Meat and Big Government,” Paul Schwennesen